SUMMARY: Sun v880, RAID, Configuration

Woah, many thanks to all the responses!
First, as to the matter of mirroring swap. I had several responses, but
the majority said to go ahead and mirror swap, in that if swap somehow
failed, Solaris would fail and there goes the reliablity of RAID. They
also all said that the performance hit wasn't that noticable on RAID1+0.
*note* - RAID 1 IS mirroring
All the responses warned me against RAID5. The various comments were
that RAID5 will slow it down heavily - "perofmred like a dog",
particularly on writes. The only real reason to go with RAID5 would be
if you needed more space than a RAID1+0 system could offer. This means
that a RAID1+0 system size is limited to the maximum size of a single
disk. For larger systems, you would need to either use hardware RAID5,
a SAN, or some other solution. If we get to that point, an external SAN
might be a better choice for us than using the internal disks.
Another few notes on RAID controller cards - no real consensus on these,
in that some said there wasn't a card, others said there were.
Generally, it sounds like Software RAID though is typical and
acceptible, and that hardware RAID is unavailable from Sun.
Mounting options are mostly fine, but several mentioned adding
"logging", which I'll start looking at. Aside from that, the default
options work.
As for VxFS and VxVM, the general commentary is yes, it's faster,
better, etc. but for the cost, not always necessary. The SDS system
works perfectly fine for most uses, and only one the really higher loads
and higher end systems would we need to look at VxFS.
Soft partitions were one idea presented by Carl Marino. Here's the link
he sent to me. It's something we'll definitely look at:
http://sysunconfig.net/unixtips/soft-partitions.html
As for a partioning scheme, there's several ideas, none of which
recommend using RAID5. I also used some of the DiskSuite tools, and
found that the only drive getting any hit at all right now is Oracle.
The general thought after discussions and testing is to do something
like this:
/ 15GB, RAID1+0 on D1, D2
swap 6GB, RAID1+0 on D1, D2
/oracle 10GB, RAID1+0 on D1, D2
/oracle/oradata 36GB RAID1+0 on D3, D4
For most, it sounded like a separate /var partition is unnecessary,
although there was no firm response one way or the other. The comments
on the /var partition were that the majority of logging, as well as
Oracle installation information is in there, and thus having it
separately isn't a bad idea, but probably unnecessary today.
A /usr/local or other partition was also said to be unneccessary
considering the purposes of our system. Additionally, if I have to, I
can just get more drives for other partitions, and move things around
for something like websphere or other stuff. Further, I may look at
soft partitions, and rethink the majority of the above.
Last, almost everyone who said anything about solaris said go with
Solaris 9, if nothing else due to the improvements in UFS and SDS and
other components.
Thanks to the list for the information, and special thanks to the
following people for responding:
________________
Hichael Morton
Jay Lessert
Carl Marino
Darren Dunham
Brett Lymn
Tim Chipman
Kevin Buterbaugh
Paul Roetman
Frank Foerster
Andrew Stueve
Regards,
Jason McIntosh
--
/--------------------------------------|---------------------------\
| Jason McIntosh | CELL: 573-424-7612 |
| Webmaster, thinker, Programmer, etc. | WORK: 573-884-3865 |
| http://poetshome.com/ | |
|------------------------------------------------------------------|
|"How should I know if it works? That's what beta testers are |
|for. I only coded it." |
|(Attributed to Linus Torvalds, somewhere in a posting) |
\--------------------------------------|---------------------------/
-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux)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=ueqZ
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
[demime 0.99c.7 removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]
_______________________________________________
sunmanagers mailing list
sunmanagers@sunmanagers.org
http://www.sunmanagers.org/mailman/listinfo/sunmanagers